(a) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a process and an arrangement for encoding video pictures. Particularly it concerns the operational control of the macroblock layer, and it is useable for encoding video sequences.
(b) Description of Related Art
The specification of most block-based hybrid video coding standards including MPEG-2 Visual [1], H.263 [2], MPEG-4 Visual [3] and H.264/AVC [4] provide only the bit-stream syntax and the decoding process in order to allow interoperability. References listed as numbers within the specification between square brackets are identified at the end of the detailed description of the application under the heading “References”. The encoding process is left out of scope to permit flexible implementations. However, the operational control of the source encoder is a key problem in video compression. For the encoding of a video source, a variety of coding parameters such as quantization parameters, macroblock and block modes, motion vectors, and quantized transform coefficients has to be determined. On one hand, the chosen values determine the rate-distortion efficiency of the produced bit-stream for a given decoder. On the other hand, these parameters also determine the required transmission rate and decoding delay.